This blog runs parallel to a new poetry blog 'Poetry Pinfold' (poetrypinfold.blogspot.com), and a new blog with poems in Dutch (bartnooteboomgedichten.blogspot.com)

Saturday, January 19, 2019

406. Why capitalism is unbeatable

In spite of a number of crises, capitalism is still
thriving. How come? Does it satisfy more than material needs?

The human being is confronted with a range of
antagonisms: the sacred/eternal and the profane/temporal, heaven and earth,
body/matter and soul/spirit, desire and contentment, the universal and the
particular, self/individual and other/collective, unity and variety, true and
false. How can one deal with these? One needs a combination of fooling oneself,
in ‘cognitive dissonance’, denial of the tension, and having an eye only for
one side of an antagonism, with ideology that enshrines one’s preferred option.
Capitalism does both superbly.

It opts unequivocally for the self and denigrates the
social, communal and local. It even proves (mathematically!) that greed is
good, produces the highest possible level of prosperity. What is more alluring
than that? It appeals to natural urges towards greed and self-manifestation, in
both production and consumption. Opposition from altruism is blocked because that
cannot survive in markets.

Its individualism is sanctioned by the Christian
belief in individual, immortal souls. The magic of markets is that they offer
variety, but under unity of universal market principles.

It appeals to the unquestionable, universal truth of
markets, in a mystique of the automatic force of the ‘invisible hand’ of Adam
Smith. ‘Laissez faire’: the magic will work itself. No counterforce can rival
it. And no developing country must close itself off from international markets
(while developed countries did that in their infancy).

In going for the individual it obstructs collective
forces that may curtail it, such as unions, consumer societies, and ecological
societies. It does constitute an interest group in itself. It lobbies for
advantage, but not overtly, in secrecy, and denied when publicized. It is in
the guilty interest of government to contribute to its secrecy, enhanced by
revolving door careers between business and government.

In the stimulus of unending consumption, with new
desires, it helps keep the boredom at bay that follows the satisfaction of
desire. Shopping then becomes a way of life. The opposite of Buddhism, one
could say.

It appeals to two forms of Romanticism. One, going
back to Rousseau, is that of the free, autonomous individual against the
coercion, manipulation and distortion of society. ‘There is no such thing as
society’, was the motto of Margaret Thatcher. Breaking out of plodding
mediocrity.

The second form of Romanticism is that of the
transgression of boundaries: of the discoverer, the imperialist, the heroic
entrepreneur, and the heroic scientist, breaking old constraints and opening
new avenues to untold power, insight, pleasure and convenience. According to
Harari[i] it is the combination of
capitalism, the scientific spirit and credit (to finance expansion and growth) that
has produced European prominence in the world. And now Europe is being taken
over by others imitating that perspective, first in the West (the US) and then in
the East (China). They now practice capitalism in a purer or more complete form
than Europe. Europe began to have qualms about capitalism, in communism,
socialism and humanism, and now has lost its position of power.

It is Nietzschean, in its creative destruction,
breaking up the old, not letting oneself be held back in power by the mediocre,
with their jealousy, grudges and slave mentality. However, in large part this
is myth. Large capital focuses on incremental innovation that leaves sunk
investments intact for as long as possible, prolonging their life to save
capital and squeeze it for profits. The most radical innovations are conducted
by smaller firms, which then get bought by the large ones, to be frozen for as
long as possible.

Ethical objections, and pleas for justice and
benevolence, are waved off with the liberal claim that morality is a private
matter, for behind the front door. The ruling ethic is that only outcomes
count, in terms of utility, measured as prosperity. It considers instrumental,
extrinsic quality of tools, capital and actions, not the intrinsic quality of
processes (work), conditions and intentions. Justice beyond prosperity is not
on the agenda. Of the classical virtues of reason/prudence, courage, moderation
and justice, capitalism satisfies reason, in pursuing science, and courage, in
crossing boundaries, but it violates the virtues of moderation and justice.

It pursues the truth of pragmatism: truth is what
works. No nonsense, not the airy idealism and speculation of stuffy, ivory
tower idealists.

Finally, while once upon a time the expectation was
that capital would be overwhelmed by the power of labour, now with
globalization the power of capitalism has only increased, and subdues labour, with
the threat of capital to move its employment elsewhere if it does not get its
way, in tax evasion, low cost, and low security and intrinsic quality of
labour, subsidies for energy, and lenient environmental restrictions.

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Poems posted on Poetrypinfold.blogspot.comComing down (a memory of Genevaa) NightYin and YangPoetry pinfoldSiëstaDown and out in the mindThe stream bears light (the Nasrid palace at the Alhambra)From one to many Sunday in GoudaOn the canalStanzas of stone (San Gimignano, torre grosso)The words have a ballNo rocket scienceMontreuxNew roomGenerationsSister (Paris)MotherMother 2Blessed solitudeCivil servantAdolescent lamentThe streamTender rip-offNight 2BirdsAtlas unmovedSeminar on KrakmaroDiplomacyDepositionWinter train in ThuringenSarajevoFar aheadHat trick on the canalFlowers of deathOn a camping one night

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